Fantastic Caverns

I spent a little time underground this weekend at a place called Fantastic Caverns near Springfield, MO. Missouri is known as the "Cave State" with 100 or more new caves being found each year. Some are small and others are, well, not so small.

Fantastic Caverns was discovered in 1862 but not explored until 1867. The first explorers of the cave was a group of women from Springfiled, MO who were part of an "activities club". The cave goes back into the ground for more than half a mile and there are two levels. The top level is 125 below the surface. The bottom level still has water running through it and can only be accessed by special permission and only during the dry months of the summer. The bottom level requires hard hats, flashlights, knee pads and no problems with tight, enclosed spaces!

I didn't have to do any crawling around in the mud and dirt to get these photos, the cave has been a tourist attraction for many years now and they have some of the more stunning features lit so you can see them better. All I had with me was the on-board flash on the Nikon D80 so I had to put all of these through photoshop to brighten them up a little. I may have over done it some but I wanted to make sure all of the features could be seen.

I will put up some other photos over the next couple of days.